On the heels of state approval of Wharf Resources' expanded mining near Terry Peak, state officials are now talking with Valentine Mining about gouging out another chunk of the Black Hills. Miners would like to make the Ragged Top Mountain area, just over the rim of Spearfish Canyon near Savoy, a little more ragged:
Mike Cepak of the Minerals and Mining Department with the DENR said the mine would be a surface mining operation, expected to run for several years and produce about 20,000 ounces of gold per year.
The mine would be located mainly on private land, outside a county exclusion zone that prohibits any new surface mining operations in Spearfish Canyon, but the Valentine Mining Company would still need a county-issued conditional use permit and a state mine permit to operate in the area.
Cepak said that the mining company has secured a number of investors to establish the mine. Most of them are from South Dakota.
...Cepak said the site is designated on the state's preliminary list of Special, Exceptional, Critical or Unique lands, so a hearing before the state Board of Minerals and Environment would be required to obtain clearance to proceed with the permit process [Mark VanGerpen, "Old Mine Site Near Spearfish Canyon Could Revive," Black Hills Pioneer, 2011.12.03].
Ragged Top was first mined back in 1886. Gold mining there petered out after 1914, since which time Spearfish Canyon has become known as one of the most scenic drives in South Dakota. Tourists flocking to the canyon for the cool fall colors make September one of Spearfish's best months for sales tax revenue.
What better idea then to rev up another gold mine, drive more industrial traffic up Highway 14A, and hack up some more trees and mountaintops?
The Spearfish Canyon region is clearly special, exceptional, critical, and unique. Lawrence County and the Board of Minerals and Environment should think very hard about whether they should allow the expansion of non-sustainable industry here.
"But how is it that I've heard so little of this miracle and we, toward the Atlantic, have heard so much of the Grand Canyon when this is even more miraculous. All the better eventually ... that the Dakota are not on the through line to the Coast ... My hat is off to South Dakota treasures."
Double check with the geologists on this, Cory, but I think you'll find that given today's market, there are rocks all over the Black Hills that used to be considered worthless, but are now considered "ore." Once the market price for gold goes back down to more sane levels (closer to what it costs to extract and mill it) those speculators will go away.
Let's just hope that as they are raping the Black Hills and Spearfish Canyon that these 'job creators' aren't faced with any 'job killing' rural dust regulations.
On the plus side I'm guessing that having the dust, noise and industrial earth moving equipment sharing the road with those pesky tourists will give them the signal to go elsewhere. Who needs them when there is gold to be mined.
Not to mention this would be a great experience for our poor children to grab Newt's dream of learning what work is and ease the burden on our classrooms at the same time. What's not to like?
Bill, I hadn't thought of that angle, but it makes perfect sense. It sounds like those gold deposits are the Black Hills version of tar sands. Looks like we'd better start rooting for lower gold prices! How do we make that happen?
Gold always goes up whenever people lose trust in other investments. For starters, and for a lot of other reasons as well, get the toxic real estate assets off the books. The banks need to take a haircut and refinance those houses where people are upside down in their mortgages and make that whole thing make sense again.
All they have done so far is to take the Feds (our) cheap money and gamble with it. That money was supposed to go to fix the real estate market they trashed. That will kick demand in the butt and let Troy's "confidence fairy" out of her cage.
After that, start loaning businesses money again and taking some risks. If other investments start looking secure again, people maybe will stop hoarding gold.
Of course, the all those people who bought gold at inflated rates because Glen Beck told them to will have to take a haircut, but hey, that's what you get for listening to the anti-Christ, right Sibmeister?
Bill is right on; but, this is not all bad.
Ragged Top is a nasty problem, is being reopened because it will look like further reclamation and will be accessed from the Maitland Road side of the drainage. Terry Peak Ski Area is being affected, too.
I would love to see negotiations to remediate more sites, especially from the Grizzly Gulch tailings pond all the way to the Superfund progrect on middle Whitewood Creek below the slag pile.
Rochford is another hot spot where existing scorched earth is still valuable enough to reclaim while metals prices are high.
I would prefer to see EPA as the lead authority rather than the toothless, earth hater-dominated SDDENR that has already been bought off by the Larry Manns and the Harry Christiansons.
Yup. Somebody has to go in and clean that sh*t up. Homestake sure ain't gonna do it anymore.
There was a huge fight about this a couple decades ago. Environmental groups and local Spearfish Canyon citizens proposed special, exceptional critical and unique status for a chunk of land that included Ragged Top. The mining industry finagled to have just Spearfish Canyon (rim to rim) covered under the declaration. We always figured there would be some company that would get around to messing up Ragged Top.
Also a local initiative in Laurence County that banned mining in the broader Spearfish Canyon area ( including Ragged Top) passed, but that was struck down by a federal court.
Donald, do you recall why the federal court struck down that broader ban? And are there folks from that earlier fight over the canyon around who would want to wage war on the Valentine Mining plan this time?
Bill, why isn't the EPA involved on this issue? Is it that the land is mostly private, no federal forest land?
Here is the decision.
http://www.icmj.com/UserFiles/South%20Dakota%20Mining%20Association%20v_%20Lawrence%20County%2097-3861.pdf
Federal preemption (1872 Mining Law) is one reason. Another is that attorneys defending the law did not originally bring up the argument that the ordinance also applied to private lands.
Not sure about Ragged Top, Cory, but at one time, Homestake owned the mineral rights to much of the Northern Black Hills. Kind of a weird deal. Other people owned the surface rights, but Homestake owned everything underneath (I lived and owned property in both Deadwood and Lead for a while.)
A famous quote from one Homestake official went something like "We'll mine main street Lead if we find enough gold there."
Pretty sure everything around Spearfish Canyon was Homestake, mineral-rights wise. Not sure what's become of that situation. It wouldn't surprise me if Homestake still retained a lot of those claims.
I bet Don and Larry know more about it than I do.
Check this chart, Cory, and you can kind of see the volatility in gold prices corresponding to troubled markets. I'm not great at this, but it sure seems to me that the current price is almost certainly a "bubble" that's set to pop as soon as the market crisis on other fronts subsides.
http://www.nma.org/pdf/gold/his_gold_prices.pdf
I might be making this up: but, when Barrick bought out Homestake they sold most of the ground to private investors (although the tribe got some), and kept the water rights.
KW could add more if he was paying attention.